Being in business and handling all that comes with it to ensure your product’s services are doing what you promise to your customers, you will sometimes encounter unsatisfied customers. How do you currently handle them? How have you set up training or modified it now with the remote ways business is being handled during the pandemic and your adjustments for moving forward? Having an upset customer is not always a bad situation to find yourself in. They may have identified a gap in your process or service that they are looking to provide insight to by voicing their disappointment. When they choose to be vocal about it is a great way to show them the true pedigree of your company and how you handle all circumstances with your customers. An upset customer who has taken the time to speak, call or email you about a problem is looking for an immediate resolution or to see a process change implemented to benefit not only themselves but others in the future as well. One of the best things you can do is listen to them, show empathy and really hear what caused the issue. There are three steps you can take to show empathy in your actions, and then execute on them, although I am sometimes amazed at the level in which some firms show a blantant disregard for the care of their customers when they have issues.
Category: Tools and Information
What Does It Mean To Be An Entrepreneur? | Getentrepreneurial.com
What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? It’s more than being a business owner; it’s a perspective and a lifestyle.
The road to entrepreneurship is often a treacherous one filled with unexpected detours, roadblocks and dead ends. There are lots of sleepless nights, plans that don’t work out, funding that doesn’t come through and customers that never materialize. It can be so challenging to launch a business that it may make you wonder why anyone willingly sets out on such a path.
Despite all of these hardships, every year, thousands of entrepreneurs embark on this journey determined to bring their vision to fruition and fill a need they see in society. They open brick-and-mortar businesses, launch tech startups or bring a new product or service into the marketplace.
Why is snow white? | Live Science
Imagine waking up after a night of heavy snowfall — you look out the window and see a world of white. But if you turn on a faucet or open the freezer, you’ll notice that liquid water and ice usually appear clear. So, why is snow white?
When it comes to understanding how H2O, an inherently clear substance, can transform into something white, Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and author of snowcrystals.com, a site about the physics of snowflakes, used the following analogy. “If you take a piece of glass, like a windowpane, which is obviously clear, but then you get a hammer out and you smash the pane into little bits of glass … now it’s white.”
How to Negotiate a Business Loan | businessnewsdaily.com
Business loan terms are often negotiable, giving borrowers a chance to secure more favorable rates and better terms.
- Negotiating your business loan terms can help your business get to the next growth stage more easily.
- Your interest rate, prepayment terms and personal guarantee provisions are three important areas that you can negotiate.
- Before heading to the negotiation table, you should know the key terminology to make the best case for your business.
- This article is for small business owners considering borrowing money for additional funding.
You can’t start or grow your business without funding. Unfortunately, applying for and getting a business loan isn’t usually a fast or stress-free experience. On top of that, some small business owners believe that they have to take the loans at face value and can’t negotiate the terms. Thankfully, that is far from the case. So, what parts of a business loan are negotiable, and what should you know before heading to the negotiation table?
How To Log Your Daily Activities And Manage Your Time Better | Life Hack
Go to business school, and you’ll hear it over and over again: What gets measured gets managed. Often attributed to Peter Drucker, this maxim also applies to time management. The best way to improve your time management is to log your daily activities. Simply seeing how your time is spent empowers you to be more productive.
Before you begin recording your daily activities, you have two choices to make—where to do it and how to do it. Let’s discuss them both.
Where to Log Your Daily Activities
Generally speaking, you have two options for logging your daily activities: physically or digitally. Although there’s no “right” answer, there are reasons why people choose one over the other.
Digital Logging
For a few reasons, many people prefer to log their tasks in a calendar or productivity software:
1. Accessibility
Who wants to carry a planner everywhere they go? Digital tracking tools can be accessed from your phone, which is probably in your pocket from when you wake up to when you hit the hay. They can also be pulled up on your computer, where you’ll analyze the data.
2. Customizability
Do you like to view your tasks as a calendar or a list? Do you like to categorize them by type, participant, timeline, or something else? Do you color-code them? Digital activity logging tools put you in the driver’s seat. If you change your mind about a layout or color choice, you can always adjust it later.
5 Ways To Have Better Sales Conversations | AllBusiness.com
Having trained more than 1,500 insurance agents since 2013, I have learned that one of the best strategies to improve the outcome of sales is to improve an agent’s ability to have better sales conversations with their prospects. Simply put, the more significant our conversations are with prospects, both in building rapport, fact-finding, and presenting our opportunity, the more sales we are going to make.
In this article I’m going to share five of my favorite strategies for improving sales conversations with prospects that will help you improve trust and close more deals.
Don’t Make These Cybersecurity Mistakes in Your Business in 2021 | Small Business Trends
Data privacy and cybersecurity became buzzwords in 2020, and for good reason. Due to bad privacy practices and cybersecurity mistakes, businesses both big and small were affected by data security vulnerabilities.
Data breaches such as the Solar Winds hack, Nuclear Weapons Agency Breach, and Clearview AI’s entire client list being stolen were just a few results of software vulnerabilities. Hackers gained access to T-Mobile’s employees’ email accounts, compromising customer and employee data, and Nintendo left 160,000 users vulnerable from a massive hijacking campaign.
Even Twitter experienced a large phishing attack that resulted in penetration tools being stolen. The number of attacks were ample, proving that businesses must take cybersecurity and data privacy more seriously.
Should You Use the Same Fee Structure for These Two Consulting Engagements? | David A. Fields
Consulting engagements come in many flavors. Your consulting firm’s work for a client could range from answering questions in real time based on your knowledge and experience, to developing research-based recommendations, to constructing and implementing complex solutions.
Where does advisory work fit in, and should you construct contracts for advisory work differently?
5 Predictions for America’s Small Businesses in the Biden Era | Inc.com
Before this past year, in which the coronavirus took more than 374,000 lives and permanently shuttered around four million small businesses, few people appreciated the crucial role of the U.S. Small Business Administration as well as Karen Mills.
Today, the former SBA administrator has plenty of company. More than 7.1 million businesses received some form of aid from the agency in 2020. Over 5.2 million small businesses received a Paycheck Protection Program loan during the first and second tranches of the aid program, 1.8 million businesses received debt relief from the agency, and more than 42,300 businesses received a loan through the SBA’s flagship 7(a) loan program in 2020.
YouTube and WhatsApp inch closer to half a billion users in India | TechCrunch
WhatsApp has enjoyed unrivaled reach in India for years. By mid-2019, the Facebook-owned app had amassed over 400 million users in the country. Its closest app rival at the time was YouTube, which, according to the company’s own statement and data from mobile insight firm App Annie, had about 260 million users in India then.
Things have changed dramatically since.
In the month of December, YouTube had 425 million monthly active users on Android phones and tablets in India, according to App Annie, the data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch. In comparison, WhatsApp had 422 million monthly active users on Android in India last month.
